


Folk Horror

by malchanceux



Series: Blood and Tears [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Rising (2007)
Genre: Angst, Blood Drinking, Blood and Gore, Gen, He collected stray humans, Hurt/Comfort, I think it's safe to say Will has always had unhealthy hoarding issues, Mischa Lives, Prompt Fill, So apparently before Will collected stray dogs, Vampire!Will, Vampires, Wee!Hannibal, Wee!Lecters, but happy ending i swear, loudly implied cannibalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-04
Updated: 2014-01-04
Packaged: 2018-01-07 09:42:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1118397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malchanceux/pseuds/malchanceux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt Mini-Fill: "Hannibal doesn't end up being fed Misha, because before the soldiers can kill his little sister, Vampire!Will rescues the Lecter siblings. Once he's done draining the soldiers of their blood, Will makes sure Hannibal and Misha survive the winter."</p><p>Original post here on the kinkmeme: hannibalkink.dreamwidth.org/3166.html?thread=6207326</p>
            </blockquote>





	Folk Horror

**Author's Note:**

> Just a quickie fic. Things are really slowing down in the kinkmeme. Thought I'd do a little something-something to give it a bit of a boost.
> 
> Also, never read Hannibal Rising or seen the movie, so I took a lot of liberties here and used only what I've gleaned from other fanfics. This is probably totally NOT how things went down, but #YOLO it's fanfiction so who cares.
> 
> Anyway, enjoy.

            It is so unbearably cold. The wind howls harsh against the sturdy log walls that protects the freezing occupants behind them, but they do little to insulate the small, one roomed cabin; does little to abate the on setting hypothermia. A little boy and even younger girl curl huddled in a corner, the two smallest of a ragtag group of survivors fighting for such a title. Their breath mists and mingles in thick clouds around them as they shiver in each other’s arms, trying desperately to create and hold onto some modicum of warmth.

            There is a hunger, as well, within the group. Their stomachs cramp around what little there has been to offer since winter has truly settled in. As soldiers, the older men of the group had fared well with the hunt before feet of snow seemingly overtook the rickety cabin overnight. It had been days since anything—be it meat from a small animal or the roots of a dying plant—has been found. The small boy and girl had resorted to frozen tree bark not hours before. The girl’s sickness has since then only grown worse.

            The boy fears the glint of depravity he finds in the soldiers eyes as they search over himself and his trembling sister. He fears the quiet whispers the men of the cabin have been spewing profusely back and forth for the last hour or so.

            “Boy,” Efim says gruffly, startling the huddled forms. He is the oldest of the soldiers—the leader, “ _Hannibal._ You two look awfully cold over there, all by yourselves.”

            “Awfully bored,” Alexey adds in with a smile that does not reach his eyes. He rubs his hands together before standing and blowing warmth into his palms and over his frosting beard, the last soldier, Ivan, following suit.

            “The snow has settled some,” Efim goes on to say suggestively, “The wind as well. Why don’t you let Alexey and Ivan take your sister out to play? You can stay here and help me prepare for our dinner.”

            Then they are all smiling, and Alexey is approaching even though neither Hannibal nor Mischa has acquiesced. The boy stutters out a pathetic _‘no, please’,_ though his begging goes unheeded as Alexey takes Mischa’s arm and pulls her small body from his own.

            “Hannibal?” she mumbles out, drowsy and sick. It is clear she does not want to play, “ _Hanni?_ ”

            It is clear that Alexey nor Ivan _plan_ to play.

            Tears prickle at Hannibal’s eyes and he stands on weak legs, as though he can actually stop them. Efim grabs his arm in a firm grip, keeps him in the cabin as his little sister is made to leave. He wants to follow.

 _“Please,”_ he pleads again, “Take me instead.”

            Efim regards him with a critical eye, surprised but not ashamed knowing the young boy understands what is about to become of his sibling.

            “I think not,” he finally says, and the world outside the cabin is eerily quiet, devoid of the soft crunching of feet in the snow, or the high laughter of a little girl playing—or the bark of a sick child’s coughing, “The boys and I, we do not know how long this winter will last.”

            Tears fall then, the implications of the old soldier’s words clear. Efim pushes him back then, away from the door and back into his corner. He curls into himself helplessly. The void where his Mischa had once sat heavy and sick and shivering in his arms is sharp like glass, gouging what little remains of his heart into bloody shreds.

            For what seems like an eternity, the sounds of a soft breeze and the crackling of a weak fire is all that can be heard. Efim hunches over, curling around the fire for warmth, when a high pitched screaming fills the air with fear and pain.

            It is a distinctly male voice.

 _“What in the Heavens—?”_ Efim shoots up like a startled animal, swaying in his weakness. Hannibal pushes himself more firmly into the corner, scared and yet numb. How was the condemned supposed to feel about a perceived threat to their life, he wondered, other than to roll over and accept an earlier sentencing.

            “Alexey?” Efim called out, but did not budge from his place by the fire—too afraid to approach the door. For a moment silence engulfed both the soldier and the boy, but a series of pained groans and wet, intelligible pleas, followed by more silence spurred Efim into action. He ran across the cabin, going through his own pack along with Ivan’s before pulling out a wicked looking hunting knife. Clutching the blade firmly at his chest, Efim stood alert in front of the cabin’s only entrance. He tentatively approached the worn wood in slow, tiptoed strides.

            The door trembled under a powerful _thunk_ against its outside, causing both Efim and Hannibal to jump nearly out of their skins. For a moment, there was only stillness, but slowly—ever so agonizingly slowly—the door’s handle turned, stiff from the ice and creaking as such, and the door was pushed open.

            The bloodied mess of Ivan slides down the door and to the floor with an empty thud, his eyes wide in fear but unseeing. His neck was sodden with blood, the flesh torn. He did not bleed out on the frozen ground, however. He seemed _drained._

 _“My God—”_ Efim threw himself away from the corpse, his eyes glued to his fallen comrade.

            “Not quite,” a stranger growls out, just outside the doorframe. Hannibal gasps from where he is still curled into himself, shivering from more than just cold now. The man holds himself tall and steady, as though the cold he stands in does not quite touch him. All the same, there is a light brush of snow in his hair and on his shoulders, and his mouth and throat and the collar of his shirt is soaked with quickly freezing blood that is clearly not his own. He has one hand fisted in an unresisting Alexey’s hair, and the other gently clasped in Mischa’s own inviting palm. She looks stunned and tired and ill but not frightened.

            “Mischa?” Hannibal says softly as he pulls himself upright. He holds out his hand for the little girl to take, to entice her from the _(dangerous)_ man’s side.

            The stranger’s eyes lock onto the boy’s movements, his eyes an unnatural, intense blue as they take in the half-starved and shivering form of Hannibal Lecter. From head to toe the boy is studied—everything he is and worth taken in and examined and weighed. Hannibal swears the liquid pools glow, shimmer, as they lock onto his own maroon gaze.

            “Go to your brother,” the stranger says then, letting go of Mischa’s hand and sending her off with a gentle push. His eyes stay with Hannibal’s as he says, “Close your eyes and cover your ears.”

            The boy nods, but only tucks his sister into his arms, covering her hands with his own as she mindlessly obeys the bloodied stranger at the door. Hannibal falls back into their claimed corner, huddling around his sister’s freezing form but does not shut his eyes—he does not hinder his own ears. The man gives a small nod of acknowledgement towards the boy’s decision, and turns his attention back to the trembling soldier with the knife.

            “You’re a general,” the man says, eyes flicking from Efim’s chest to face, “I found your men.”

            He punctuates his sentence by dropping Alexey’s limp form with a muffled _thump_ to the wooden floor. He, unlike Ivan, still seems mostly unharmed and alive, though unconscious.

            “I know what you are, _monster,”_ Efim spits, holding the knife out in a defensive stance, “We have stories of your kind in my home village. _Abomination,_ we call you _. Hell spawn.”_

            “Powerful words coming from a man who has condemned the life of children for his own survival.”

            “You think yourself _above_ me, demon?”

            “I never said that,” the stranger grins wickedly then, “Trust me, I am every bit the monster your _village stories_ have made me out to be.”

            The man moves then, with a speed _not possible_ , and pins Efim to the far wall by the neck with one arm. The soldier lashes out with his knife, but in a blur the stranger catches Efim’s arm. A distinct _snap_ rings out in frozen air of the tiny cabin, and Efim _screams._

            “Enough of that,” the stranger says, bashing the back of the general’s head into the wall and dazing him into silence. The stranger readjusts his grip so that he holds the soldier by the shoulders, and brings his head near to the now exposed throat. From his angle in the corner, Hannibal has an unobstructed view as sharp canines seem to _extend_ before piercing the flesh of Efim’s neck in an easy slide.

 _“No!”_ Efim groans out, though his voice sounds wet and strained. He pulls at the strangers hair with his one good hand before it is restrained, slammed painfully into the wall while his blood is drained from his body one slow swallow at a time.

            The boy understands why Ivan hadn’t bled on the floor now.

            Hannibal thinks he should be afraid, he should be _terrified_ and try to run. But this man has done him nor his sister harm—in fact, he has, even if unintentionally, saved his precious Mischa. She shivers in his arms from the cold and Hannibal thinks of what Efim had called the stranger. Abomination. Hell Spawn. Demon. _Monster._

            No, the boy thinks. The stranger is no _monster,_ though he is unsure what to label him.

            The sound of Efim’s limp body hitting the wood floorboards brings the young Lecter from his thoughts and back to the freezing present. The stranger turns from the general’s corpse and gazes at the two children with his shimmering blue eyes. His mouth, still bloodied, forms a tense line as he seems to consider something. Hannibal catches his stare and returns it with the same intensity.

 _An animal,_ the boy settles on then, when the inhuman eyes strike him as that of a wolf he’d seen once, back home in the mountains when his mother and father were still alive. _An animal relying on its basest instincts to survive and hunt and claim._

            The idea, oddly enough, after everything he has been through and suffered at the hands of _proper_ men and woman, is a beautiful one indeed.

            The creature’s inner quarrel seems to come to a conclusion as he blinks his gaze away from the boy’s and crouches, lifting a hand, palm up, in invitation.

            “Come,” he says simply, gently, “If you want to live, come with me.”

            To an outsider, such a request would be preposterous. To go with the man-eating stranger who just single handedly killed three military soldiers would be suicidal, _insane_. But it was _because_ of what the stranger had done, and what he was, that made the invitation seem so much more enticing. Impossible to ignore or put down.

            Hannibal stood from his corner, releasing Mischa only to gather her up in a stronger embrace. He could barely hold her, despite how much weight she had lost and _because_ of how much mass he himself no longer had, but he only had a few simple feet to carry her. In the stranger’s arms, the weight of his and his sister’s life would be taken of his shoulders and out of his hands.

            Without hesitation, the boy reached up for the creatures hand, shocked when he found it so warm compared to everything else around it.

            The stranger smiled as he straightened, turning back to Efim’s corpse.

            “I tend to run hot,” he said as way of explanation as he tugged the general’s jacket off. The collar was only a little damp with the soldier’s blood—and with the weather as it was, Hannibal could not find it in himself to care.

            The stranger wrapped the jacket around Hannibal’s shoulders before picking the boy up, placing him on his hip but mindful of the little girl between them. He used only one arm to carry them both, and the boy would have been scared of falling if he did not feel the supernatural strength hiding beneath lean muscles, or the perfect sense of balance he felt when the man walked.

            The creature stopped only once as he was leaving the cabin, bending slightly to grab hold of Alexey’s hair again. With both arms full, the stranger made off steadily through the snow.

            Hannibal did not know where they were going, he did not know what the man planned to do with him once they got there. The boy only had a child’s trust in the murderer who had saved both him and his ailing sister, and the unnaturally blue eyes that warned him of a hunter always prowling for his next kill.

            This stranger was the hunter of hunters, an efficient killer with hunger for the blood of man.

            Hannibal, with his sister safe from the hands of starving _men,_ could see the appeal.


End file.
